


Hold Still Right Before We Crash

by icewhisper



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Eating Disorders, M/M, post-shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 08:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11398809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: They fall together in a fit of bitter irony months after bullets tore through the comfortable chaos of their lives and weeks after he realized that they both loved Lexie, but that they didn’t love her enough.





	Hold Still Right Before We Crash

They fall together in a fit of bitter irony months after bullets tore through the comfortable chaos of their lives and weeks after he realized that they both loved Lexie, but that they didn’t love her enough.

Lips and teeth and fingers gripping, he watched Alex fall to pieces beneath him in a half-lit on-call room. They gathered their clothes after without a word passed between. He grabbed Alex’s pager by mistake and passed it back to him as nurses watched with knowing eyes.

They didn’t talk about it, but it happened again and again until dim on-call rooms turned into the mattress of Mark’s apartment. Alex rode him with shaking legs and an arched back. Quiet grunts and Mark’s hand splayed out at the base of his spine.

He left after they were done and didn’t leave a bit of himself behind.

Mark pretended what they were doing wasn’t going to blow up in their faces.

He watched Alex spiral into something out of control. Saw the anger and the petty fights get exchanged with his friends and the reprimands that got handed down. Bailey told him to screw his head on straight and Mark snorted like she’d said something funny. No one heard him.

Elevators and avoidance and scars Mark made sure to never touch. Touching it would have been like detonating a bomb and they’d already had that happen in the hospital. No one needed a repeat, even in a metaphorical sense.

He wondered if cynicism had made him poetic or if the rest of the world could hear the ticking clock coming from Alex.

He wondered what would happen when it reached zero.

He told himself not to care.

Alex withered under his hands, cheeks gaunt and skin stretched tight over ribs. Hair dulled. Alarm bells rang in his head, dots connecting as he tasted mint on Alex’s tongue and a tiny bottle of mouth wash fell from his pocket.

He heard Alex throwing up in his bathroom one night and told himself it wasn’t any of his business. Kept telling himself that until Alex pulled back from a biting kiss, coughing, and red splattered onto his hand.

Alex didn’t look surprised and he wondered if it had happened before.

(It had, he’d learn later. Earlier that day and years ago as he bent to the pressures of a wrestling coach and fell into something he couldn’t control.)

The trip to the hospital was quiet, no more willing to vocalize what was happening to Alex than they were to vocalize what was happening between them.

Surgery. Hospital stays. Therapists.

Alex didn’t come to work for months and Mark should have taken it as an opening to end things before they got any deeper into the hole. He didn’t. He visited when Meredith and the rest of his friends didn’t, watching as weight grew back on bones and color came back to cheeks. The sadness still lingered in Alex’s eyes as a reminder while his body healed and Mark kissed him like he could kiss it away.

He couldn’t. Even if a kiss could make that stuff better, he was too fucked up to fix Alex.

They were better off without each other, but the idea of walking away put a weight on his chest that made it hard to breathe.

Alex came home on a cool day in March, safely on his way to a proper weight and with healthier coping methods. He should have gone to the house, but he was waiting on the floor outside Mark’s apartment when he got out of work that night. Searching eyes met his, like he was waiting to see if that was the moment Mark finally put an end to them, and Mark realized Alex would never be the one to do it. He didn’t want to.

He pressed Alex against the door in the hallway and kissed him until the world spun.

He might have breathed a plea for Alex to stay or he might have just said it in his head, but Alex whispered three words that sounded broken and too serious for something they still hadn’t named.

It should have scared Mark away, but he pulled Alex inside and laid him out on his bed like he hadn’t in months.

They stayed and they kept staying until people knew about them and the label that got attached wasn’t something they wanted to argue. It fit and they were too fucked up for anything normal, but it worked.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Let it be said that I haven't written for Grey's since 2012 and haven't actively watched the show since shortly after the shooting. Every so often, though, I drift back to WaltzMatildah's fics and they ruin me all over again. I blame her entirely.


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